


The Reasons Why

by Canaan



Series: How It Could Have Happened [15]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Character Study, F/M, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-04
Updated: 2011-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:57:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's not like playing around with a stopwatch or handcuffs."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reasons Why

**Author's Note:**

> Written for round one challenge three of Kink Last Author Standing on LJ. Here there be mild kink. This can be read stand-alone--just assume it happens sometime after "They Keep Killing Suzie" and before "End of Days" in s1. BR by Yamx; any remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them and I'm not making any money.

"This is absurd." Ianto put a conviction he didn't feel into his voice as he paced the small space between the foot of his bed and the chest of drawers. "It's not like playing around with a stopwatch or handcuffs. We're both adults. What's the fascination with spanking?"

Jack lounged against the wall, perfectly at ease except for the look on his face: warm but distant, like his eyes focused on something in his head far more than on Ianto's bedroom. After a moment, his eyebrows rose and he smiled. "I don't know," he said. "You tell me."

***

  
 _Ianto had come in to work to escape the nightmares: to sidestep the helplessness and failure of watching Lisa die all over again. The groans and sighs issuing from Jack's office weren't what he wanted to hear, but they also weren't surprising--it wouldn't be the first time Ianto had caught Jack_ in flagrante delicto _. It was a hazard of Jack's living in the Hub and, well, being Jack. Ianto always retreated as soon as he noticed, but Jack still knew, and Jack's smug little smirk the next morning said, "I won't bring it up unless you do."_

 _The harsh sound of a slap, on the other hand, was unexpected. Several repetitions made Ianto sure what he was hearing, and even then, he'd probably have walked away if he'd been sure Jack's whimpers were pleasure, not pain._

***

  
"It's not about pain. I don't want that."

"Okay," Jack said. "What else?"

Ianto looked at the floor, the wardrobe...anywhere but at Jack. "I don't want to be over your knee. I'm not a schoolboy who mouthed off to the teacher."

"Then it's not about humiliation, either." Jack's oddly gentle voice grated. He sounded like _he_ knew more about what was going on in Ianto's head than Ianto did himself.

Worse, he might be right.

***

  
 _That stolen glimpse haunted him: a woman Ianto didn't recognize, in Jack's chair, at Jack's desk, with Jack stretched naked over her lap while she spanked him. Ianto had watched from his oblique vantage point, caught between the reflexive urge to walk away from what sounded like sex and a stupid impulse to run to Jack's aid. He wondered what he would have done if Jack hadn't happened to turn his head, spotting Ianto through slitted eyes and giving him a small, distracted wave._

 _There was no point in dwelling on it, but Ianto was doing exactly that._

 _He waited until Tosh and Gwen were out tracking a S'briti signal and Owen was elbow-deep in an alien autopsy before going to face Jack down. "Why?" he asked._

 _Jack grinned that infuriatingly unperturbed grin. "Because it feels good? Because it's good, sometimes, not to be in control? Because it's hot?"_

 _Ianto waited for some piece of that to make sense--for something to click into his brain like a key in a lock so he could label the incident and file it neatly and not have to think about it again._

 _When that didn't happen, he nodded blankly, then turned and walked away._

***

  
The sensation was sharp at first, startling despite Ianto's being prepared for it. A little pressure, a little sting each time Jack's hand hit--just enough to make him wriggle against the pillows beneath his hips. Part of him wanted to squirm away, to roll over on the bed and catch Jack's wrist and put an end to it. Somehow, though, that would mean letting Jack win: Jack, with his evasions and his pitying smile.

The spanking stopped, and the shift in sensation as Jack's fingers trailed over his arse was wrenching. Ianto shivered. "I didn't say 'stop,'" he said brusquely.

Jack brushed his lips across Ianto's shoulder blade. "Okay," he said.

***

  
 _He should have let it go. So Jack didn't make any sense--that wasn't news. Maybe Ianto could have let it go at that, except for the pleasure-mazed look on Jack's face that night. That look was all sex, even as Jack had cried out in pain at a particularly heavy blow._

 _That look had no business on anyone's face when the meeting of hand and arse sounded so much like Dad's belt._

***

  
The longer it went on, the more it was Dad's belt all over again. Ianto wasn't fast enough, wasn't strong enough, wasn't _anything_ enough. He deserved it. His life was one long string of deserving it. The only bright spot had been Lisa, and he'd failed her, and she'd died.

The blows fell hard and fast, and that was okay: He'd failed her--he had to pay for it. It was _right_ that he suffer, that new bruises bloom on old ones. His tears soaked into the duvet and he was sniveling. Ianto _hated_ sniveling. No one could forgive sniveling, least of all him, and he hated for anyone to see him like this. The broad hand at the small of his back, though, was Jack's, and Jack could forgive anything.

Lisa would have liked him.

It was ridiculous and so breathtakingly true, Ianto's next sob became a laugh. That laugh had brothers, all determined to escape at once. He rolled onto his side and curled around his stomach, but that made the tears roll strangely across his nose and cheek and down into his ear, which just made him laugh harder. Jack's arms, which had somehow folded around him, held him close until the laughter slowed to a trickle and finally stopped.

Ianto felt remarkably unobliged to move or think or do anything else. Eventually he said, "When you told me _I_ was the only one who could say why, I thought you were having me on. I'm glad I put it to the test." Jack stroked his back silently. "Don't fancy doing it again, though."

Jack's hands stilled. "Did you get what you needed, then?" he asked.

Ianto tested a smile, and for the first time in a long time, it didn't hurt. "Yeah."

Jack kissed his forehead. "Good," he said.


End file.
